Google chairman Eric Schmidt
isn’t afraid of being critical of Apple — last week, he even
told Bloomberg competition between the two tech giants was as
“brutal" as ever — but when asked about his heroes on Thursday
night, he gave a simple answer: “For me, it’s easy. Steve Jobs.”

“We could all aspire to be a small percentage of Steve,” Schmidt
told a packed room at the Commonwealth Club of Silicon Valley,
according to CNET. He was there to promote his new book he
wrote with Google’s products VP Jonathan Rosenberg, “How Google
Works.”

Schmidt first met Jobs in 1993; Jobs had already been canned by
his former company and was working at NeXT, while Schmidt was at
Sun Microsystems, where he started as the company’s first
software manager and eventually climbed the ladder to become
director of software engineering and president of Sun Technology
Enterprises, among other titles.

The two met when Jobs invited a few members of Sun’s team,
including Schmidt, to learn about the new computer language that
served as the foundation for the latest NeXT computer, called
Objective-C.

Schmidt questioned some of the technical aspects of Jobs'
presentation, but he was absolutely smitten with his
persuasiveness. And as Schmidt and his team tried dissecting
Jobs' new technologies in the parking lot of NeXT, Jobs noticed
the group still chatting and ran out to continue the conversation
— for another full hour, according to Schmidt's new book.

Schmidt and Jobs became friends over the years. And in 2006, Jobs
invited Schmidt to join Apple's board.

Google was a big part of Apple’s first iPhone event in 2007,
because Google search and Maps would be a major part of the early
iOS ecosystem — Schmidt even appeared on stage to introduce those
products and talk up the iPhone. But when Google finally
announced Android later that same year, the rivalry between
Google and Apple began heating up.

Jobs felt betrayed — in August, months prior to Android’s
unveiling, Jobs got wind of Google’s open-source competitor to
iOS and reportedly “railed” at him, “furious about his smartphone
plans and duplicity,”
according to Gawker.

Jobs
later told his biographer Walter Isaacson that “I’m going to
destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go
thermonuclear war on this.”

Schmidt ultimately stepped down from Apple's board in August
2009.

But still, despite the rivalries in mobile and in the courtroom,
especially over patents, Schmidt held deep admiration for Jobs
and his “reality distortion field.” In 2008,
Schmidt called
Jobs “the best CEO in the world today.”

“Exceptional people are worth hanging out with,” Schmidt said
Thursday. “Because there is a good chance they are going to
change the world.”